by Paula Thornton
July 10, 2009 at 10:49 pm · Filed under
Information Management, KM
As conversations continue to go sideways over Knowledge Management vs. E2.0 (with comments bursting forth today on a post from June 2007), I realized that there is a fundamental disconnect in understanding. As one individual kept pressing for a definition of KM from me, I realized that the basis for the definition would fundamentally fail at “Knowledge” — specifically within the context of the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom continuum. So let’s start there.
I was fortunate 2 decades ago to be taught at the feet of Enterprise Architects from Boeing (where every inch of a plane is entirely designed and constructed from data — they deal with a LOT of data). The distinctions I learned about the Data…Wisdom continuum, fundamental to Information Sciences, have been invaluable throughout my career. These distinctions are relevant to the KM disconnects.
Even Tom Davenport declared in 1997, “I reist making this distinction, because it’s clearly imprecise…for years people have referred to data as ‘information’. Data, information, and knowledge aren’t easy to separate in practice; at best you can construct a continuum of the three.”
Davenport even suggested that data and knowledge take their meanings from information. The man responsible for TED, Richard Saul Wurman (RSW), proclaimed himself in the late ’80s to be in the understanding business: “You don’t have to know everything, you just need to know how to find it.” In his book, Information Anxiety (now out of print) RSW proposes that it’s not information until it informs:
Raw data can be, but isn’t necessarily, information, and unless it can be made to inform, it has no inherent value. It must be imbued with form and applied to become meaningful information. Yet, in our information-hungry era, it is often allowed to masquerade as information.
So the great information age is really an explosion of non-information; it is an explosion of data.
Yet, data can be “imbued with form”, have implied meaning, and still fail to inform. The classic example I share:
You’re in the middle of the Mojave desert. You come upon a gas station, but it’s abandoned. Lying on the counter is a map. Most would consider the map information: data in context. But there’s another criteria. It isn’t information until it’s in individually-relevant context — it has to be both important and understandable to you. In the middle of the desert, with no reference to the gas station on the map, there is no context. The map is useless noise.
Once something informs it allows for action. Knowledge, is the context by which action occurs.
Respected colleague, John Tropea, was hot on this trail when he wrote a piece similar to this one. From one source he quotes: “Knowledge is the stuff in people’s heads which enables them to do things.” But his quotes of Frank Miller and T.D. Wilson provide the basis for the KM disconnect:
Frank Miller
…knowledge was only ever tacit. Once we attempt to make knowledge (i.e., what we ‘know’) explicit, it reverts immediately to an ‘information’ state again and requires human intervention anew for sense to be made of it.
Knowledge is, after all, what we know. And what we know cannot be commodified.
Knowledge (ie ‘what we know’) is only ever ‘tacit’ and can never be ‘explicit’. It must never be thought of as a commodity to be captured, processed, stored, transmitted, managed etc.
T.D. Wilson
‘Explicit knowledge’, of course, is simply a synonym for ‘information’.
…’tacit knowledge’ involves the process of comprehension, a process which is, itself, little understood. Consequently, tacit knowledge is an inexpressible process that enables an assessment of phenomena in the course of becoming knowledgeable about the world. In what sense, then, can it be captured? The answer, of course, is that it cannot be ‘captured’ – it can only be demonstrated through our expressible knowledge and through our acts.
John then goes on to conclude:
This nullifies the concept that you can capture knowledge, as it’s not possible to capture meaning, the meaning is derived by the person encountering it, all the capturing we do is simply information management. [emphasis added]
The term Information Technology has been used for years, but most IT activities focus on data, not information. I would contend that based on the earlier definition of information that in most cases what is labeled Knowledge Management is at best Data Management, but given that term has specific meaning that is different, what we’re really dealing with is Content Management — but that would start an argument with a whole ‘nuther set of practitioners.
As I’ve said before, you can’t manage knowledge — anyone who claims that’s what they’re doing is just…mis-informed.
Knowledge is something that is applied — for action — within specific contexts. This is not the realm of what is portrayed as Knowledge Management, but it something that is facilitated by Enterprise 2.0.
by Rob Paterson
July 10, 2009 at 2:38 pm · Filed under
Adoption, Culture, Social Media
Bob Lutz – the father of the Volt and of the GM Blog and their work in Social Media will stay on – Already the GM Blog The FastLane is being presented as how GM will converse with the public. His new role – Connecting GM with the public.
Today the CEO, Fritz Henderson, had his key announcement about the future on the site as a webinar. Questions continue on the GM Twitter site @GMblogs. GM is going direct.
It’s not just company news either.
New products such as the Volt are getting regular updates from the engineers in a transparent process.
It’s quite a cultural revolution – so what is your organization doing?
by Paula Thornton
July 9, 2009 at 8:03 pm · Filed under
2.0 Design Thinking, Adoption, Emergent, Enterprise 2.0
The wagons are circling…around the wrong campfire.
Clearly, adoption is an important part of Enterprise 2.0 efforts. The FASTforward Blog team believes it’s significant enough that we’re shifing our focus to the topic. But the language of adoption for 2.0 is broken:
“…coming up with innovative ways to address those three issues to drive end user adoption” Still Looking for End User Adoption
“Reach out to existing communities of interest to drive adoption…” Think Adoption, Not Deployment
“…how a user centric (rather than technology centric) approach to deploying Enterprise 2.0 technologies will drive adoption” Expanding Enterprise 2.0 Beyond the Early Adopters
While some of these authors have introduced critical elements to address — seamlessness via platforms, work specific, governance & roles — they all use the phrase “drive adoption”. This is the antithesis of 2.0 fundamentals.
If you have to “drive adoption” you’ve failed at 2.0 design and implementation. The fundamentals of 2.0 are based on design that is organic — meets the individual where they are and adapts based on feedback — it emerges. The ‘adoption’ comes from rigorous ‘adaptation’ — it continuously morphs based on involvement from the ‘masses’. If done right, you can’t keep them away…because you’ve brought the scratch for their itch.
Good design work includes research to identify the relevant itches and discovering the possibilities to deliver capabilities right from where individuals already ARE. If that hasn’t been done, even if you’re successful — it’s relative success, you could have done a LOT better. That’s the problem with success — it’s rarely evaluated for potential capitalization (there was X potential and only N% achieved).
From a physics perspective, “driving” is the same as “push” or “pull”. None of these are relevant language in 2.0, as they waste energy (e.g. resources). Tapping natural energies — existing activities — ARE fundamental to 2.0 designs.
Rather than worry about adoption, make sure there has been adequate investment in design with a focus on the ability to adapt.
Adoption follows adaptation (the solution to the individual, not the other way around).
Footnote: The language of living systems is critical to E2.0 efforts. If you’re not conversant in such language (esp. complexity, emergence, self-organizing), have a sit-down with Mother Nature — she’ll set you straight.
by Rob Paterson
July 9, 2009 at 8:53 am · Filed under
Customer Service, Jeff Jarvis
In the good old days, if you dropped the service ball, no one really knew. You might get a letter to the CEO but your secret was your secret.
Today if you drop the ball, as Dell did back in the day with a leading blogger such as Jeff Jarvis – you could risk a genuine devaluation of the brand.
But I bet that you thought that just regular customers could still be put off and no one would know.
Well, it’s a new world out there and even regular folks can make your life hell and get pay back.
It has been just 3 days since this video about United Airlines was posted by Dave Caroll – the back story is here – 466,000 views so far. My bet is that this will go into the millions and Dave has more video’s on the way!
So what is the lesson? Your customers are deeply connected now. They will harness the full power of Social Media to get back. They can really hurt you back.
Problems happen – but now you cannot afford to think that you have buried them.
You cannot ignore the power of social media – you have to get connected too. At least you have to listen and respond well. Dell rose to the occasion in the end and have become quite expert – here is how that story ended.
Looking at Dave’s Twitter account – @DaveCarroll – I see that the mainstream media are loving this story – expect this to be huge tonight on the national news services.
I wonder if this may be a turning point for Social Media and Customer Service? How can any responsible organization not get engaged now?
PS Just in – Comcast really get the use of Twitter to help with service issues – but then cannot deliver - (Peter Hirshberg) Don’t you have to have the service as well as the SM smarts? Snip:
Comcast has achieved renown for how they respond to customer service problems on Twitter. An interesting social media case study, until it happened to me.
9:45 AM. Internet and phone crash, just before a big client call. I’m a Comcast triple play customer. I got no data, only TV. Fortunately a colleague has a draft of the prezo so I’m able to call in changes from my iPhone and she sends it off before the meeting.
10:00 AM. Service is back. We start the call.
Over-the-next-hour AM Comcast service craps out twice more. Good thing for cell phones. They make everyone (including ISPs) think “land lines, who cares?”
11:00 AM I call Comcast to complain, asking elegantly “WTF?” Comcast informs me, “We can get to it in 48 hours. If you were a business customer, we could do it sooner. But you’re not.” Worse, until they send the repair guy out to investigate, they can’t have their network people look into whether there is a problem in my neighborhood.
My response? “NOOOOOOOO.” (Cue SFX: guy throwing a fit) ”That’s a terrible way to run a carrier. Even the phone company of yore was more on the ball.” The customer service rep assures me TINMWCD (There Is Nothing More We Can Do. Why does Jarvis get all the nice acronyms?)
And then it dawns on me: I am An Empowered Consumer. In the Post Mass Media World. In the wake of the Jarvis Playbook I don’t need to threaten to throw a stink, I already stink! I’ve got 1,132 Twitter followers . So I wonder, if I Tweet, will anything come of it?
What follows is tweets, with commentary in red.
